Fish Feel––and even Donald Trump once said so

Concern for fish suffering rises worldwide

SILVER SPRING, Maryland––Suddenly voices are rising on behalf of fish, including one of the most surprising of all.

Yes, that was the voice of U.S. President Donald Trump, rarely known to express concern or compassion for anyone who doesn’t support him, discussing a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaign against sport fishing on a 2004 episode of his nationally syndicated radio program Trumped!

“I believe it’s painful for the fish”

“Whenever my sons go fishing,” Trump said, in a clip rediscovered by Buzzfeed in May 2016, recently amplified by anti-fishing activists, “they always tell me, ‘Dad, it doesn’t hurt a fish to get hooked.’ Well, I watch and I see and I believe it’s painful for the fish.”

Puffer fish. (Beth Clifton photo)

Trump does not appear to have expressed qualms about fishing either before or since that uncharacteristic comment.

But many others have.

“Toronto the Good”

On March 25, 2017, for example, about two dozen activists lay prostrate in fishing nets in front of Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto, “to protest both hunting marine animals, and having them in captivity at aquariums,” reported Grant Linton of CBC News.

“Hundreds of billions of marine animals are murdered every year when we don’t need to consume a single fish, or lobster, or any animal,” protester Len Goldberg told Linton.

When a cause becomes visible in Toronto, whose quiescent public image has earned the nickname “Toronto the Good,” it tends to have global momentum.

Lobster. (Beth Clifton photo)

Seafood firm fined Down Under

And the cause of fish and other non-mammalian marine life seems to have unprecedented momentum in recent months, exemplified by the February 2017 fine of $1,500 Australian dollars levied against Nicholas Seafoods, of Sydney.

“The first entity in Australia to be convicted of animal cruelty over treatment of a lobster,” according to Naaman Zhou of Australian Associated Press, Nicholas Seafoods “was found to be in breach of the New South Wales Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act,” Zhou recounted, “for butchering and dismembering lobsters with a band saw, without adequately stunning or killing them first. Royal SPCA investigators observed workers separating lobsters’ tails from their bodies while they were still alive, a process they said caused ‘immense pain.’”

Richard Jones

First prosecution in 20 years

Crustaceans have technically been protected by the New South Wales Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act in places where food is prepared or sold since 1997, at insistence of then-Member of the New South Wales Legislative Counsel Richard Jones.

“Victoria state has included fish and crustaceans in animal cruelty laws since 1996, and similar laws apply in the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory,” Zhou noted.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Dead fish display nixed in Japan

Yet another indication of rising global concern for marine life came from Japan, eighth among the 193 members of the United Nations in per capita fish consumption, where in November 2016 public protest forced the Space World amusement park in Kitakyushu to close a skating rink whose ice featured a display of commonly eaten fish species frozen beneath the surface.

“Space World bowed to pressure to close the facility after an online campaign denouncing the piscine graveyard as ‘cruel,’ ‘immoral’ and ‘weird,’” reported Justin McCurry, Tokyo correspondent for the Guardian. “The rink, which was supposed to have stayed open until the spring, featured about 5,000 dead sprats, mackerel and other fish bought from a local market embedded in the ice, some with their mouths still open in apparent suspended animation.”

Larger fish, including whale sharks, were represented below the ice with life-sized photographs.

Finding Nemo

PETA has opposed sport fishing since inception in 1981. The Chicago-based animal rights organization Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK) has denounced sport fishing since 1992, reflecting the personal perspective of founder Steve Hindi, who was known for his shark fishing exploits before turning vegan.

Mercy for Animals, noted for undercover video exposés of factory farms and slaughterhouses, also produced a gut-wrenching exposé of farmed catfish slaughter, Skinned Alive, first aired in January 2011.

Fish Feel: first voice for voiceless species

This time, though, the ripples show promise of becoming a tide, largely because there is now an organization, Fish Feel, of Silver Spring, Maryland, specifically dedicated to the cause of fish and other non-mammalian marine life.

Working with SHARK to document cruelty to cownose rays in killing contests on Chesapeake Bay, Fish Feel pushed parallel bills to suspend the killing contests through both houses of the Maryland legislature. A reconciled version was on April 5, 2017 sent to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who is expected to sign it into law despite strong opposition from the hunting and fishing lobbies.

“Battle of the Rays” participants shot cownose rays with arrows from practically right on top of them.

Why rays?

Cownose rays came to be targeted by recreational fishers with particular venom after studies led by Julia Baum of Dalhousie University in Halifax, published in the prestigious journal Science, in both 2003 and 2007 blamed overfishing of larger sharks for an increase in the ray population. The rays supposed then ate Chesapeake Bay scallops and oysters into decline.

But subsequent studies by Robert Fisher of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and Dean Grubbs of Florida State University have discovered that Baum “over-stated both the decline in big sharks and the ability of cownose rays to reproduce enough to devastate shellfish populations,” summarized Rona Kobel of Bay Journal in February 2016.

“Hey Doc, no ray-shooting allowed!”(Merritt Clifton collage)

“Disastrous consequences”

Shark biologist Lauren Smith in a March 6, 2017 column for www.elasmodiver.com, a web site for shark enthusiasts, cited the campaign against cownose rays as one example of “the disastrous consequences that can happen when the research which informs and underpins conservation strategies executed is not objective and, crucially, isn’t subjected to rigorous peer review.”

An underlying issue that Smith did not mention, however, was that cownose rays were especially easily scapegoated for the effects of water pollution and climate change because, before Fish Feel emerged, fish had no human voice representing any interest in their existence apart from an interest in consuming them, or in consuming whatever fish themselves might be eating.

“Largest number of exploited vertebrate animals”

“Fish are by far the largest number of exploited vertebrate animals, and arguably suffer the worst abuses,” wrote Fish Feel founder Mary Finelli to ANIMALS 24-7 on March 2, 2014. “Grievously, they receive the least concern, even from the animal advocacy community. Some one to three trillion fish per year are hauled from the waters for use as human food. Billions more are raised in factory fish farms, and untold millions of fish are tortured for so-called sport. Billions are also exploited annually for the aquarium trade and, increasingly, millions of fish are used for invasive experimentation.

Mary Finelli & Howard Edelstein.(Beth Clifton photo)

“Fish are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act,” Finelli pointed out, “nor by the Humane Slaughter Act. They are routinely impaled, crushed, suffocated, and dissected while fully conscious. Commercial fishing also kills countless whales, dolphins, birds, and other animals. It obliterates underwater habitat and wreaks havoc on ecosystems. Farmed fish are commonly crammed together in foul water. Sea lice can infest these fish so severely that their flesh is eaten to the bone. They are continually subjected to painful procedures, and many are starved for days prior to their gruesome slaughter.”

Ray in bucket. (Fish Feel photo)

“Drop in the bucket”

Finelli and her husband Howard Edelstein brought to the struggle on behalf of fish extensive background in advocacy for other “food animals.”

Finelli, after seven years serving in various capacities with the Humane Society of the U.S., was from 2002 to 2009 producer of Farmed Animal Watch, which she describes as “a weekly online news digest sponsored by numerous animal protection organizations.”

Henry Spira’s 1976 campaign against cat sex experiments at the American Museum of Natural History was the first to stop a federal funded animal experiment in progress.

Finelli could recall first hand that, “Years ago, Henry Spira observed that activists’ efforts were ‘a drop in the bucket,’ since at that time farmed animal issues were essentially unaddressed. Farmed animals are now receiving much attention,” she wrote in announcing the formation of Fish Feel, “but Spira’s lament remains largely true while fish (and shellfish), who comprise such a vast percentage of exploited animals, receive so little notice. By ignoring fish so, the animal protection community is itself being very speciesist.”

From chickens to fish

In Spira’s time (1927-1998), even broadening the focus of the then-young animal rights movement to advocate for chickens was seen by many activists––and animal rights organization leaders––as “trivializing” a cause then relatively narrowly preoccupied with animal use in laboratories.

Karen Davis, PhD. (Facebook photo)

Extending the concept of “rights” to great apes and even monkeys was seen as possible because of those species’ kinship with humans. The causes of hunted mammals, zoo animals, horses, cattle, pigs, and dogs and cats were accepted, albeit at times grudgingly, in view of human identification with other mammals.

But Spira, and United Poultry Concerns founder Karen Davis, among his most prominent and successful protégés, and also now a strong supporter of Fish Feel, were told repeatedly that the public was not yet ready to accept activism on behalf of chickens and turkeys.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Individuality

Supposedly, according to conventional activist wisdom, chickens and turkeys, raised and slaughtered in numbers dwarfing the total use of all mammals for food, lacked sufficient individuality for people to identify with them.

Significant discoveries about the sentience and intelligence of chickens and turkeys––and paleontological recognition of their descent from close kin of tyrannosaurus rex––seem to have relegated that argument to fossilization.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Meanwhile, similar scientific findings about fish, cephalopods, and crustaceans are expanding appreciation of their likenesses to humans, including in their capacity to suffer.

Personality

In May 2016, immediately preceding the recent surge of advocacy for fish, Evan Byrnes of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia published findings in the Journal of Fish Biology that Port Jackson sharks exhibit distinctly different personalities.

(Beth Clifton photo)

“Over the past few decades,” said Byrnes, “research has shown that nearly 200 species of animals demonstrate individual personality. Personality is no longer considered a strictly human characteristic. Rather it is a characteristic deeply ingrained in our evolutionary past.”

In June 2016 Oxford University zoologist Cait Newport published findings in Scientific Reports that archerfish can distinguish among human faces despite lacking the brain structure used by humans to accomplish facial recognition.

Group behavior

Christos Ioannou and colleagues from the University of Bristol School of Biological Sciences in September 2016 published data in Science Advances demonstrating that three-spined sticklebacks, the smallest freshwater fish indigenous to the United Kingdom, not only have individual personalties, but behave much like humans when obliged to make risky choices.

Sticklebacks. (Wikipedia photo)

In small groups, the braver sticklebacks tend to lead. In larger groups, individual personality appeared to be voluntarily suppressed in favor of maintaining group cohesiveness.

Said Ioannou, “This is the first time that the suppression of personality in groups has been linked to its underlying cause, which is conformity in group decision making. The behavior of the fish seems to be ‘plastic’ to the social situation. They show consistent individual differences in behavior when tested alone, reflecting personality, but they are also happy to suppress this to be able to stick together with their shoal mates if there are others around.”

Merritt & Beth Clifton

If sticklebacks behave like humans, and the converse, that the bravest individual activists have brought into being a specific sub-movement on behalf of fish can be expected to lead to collective acceptance that this is among the directions of the future.

Comments

It’s very ironic to me that PETA seems to have concern for fish but actively advocate against cats, who are also, last time I checked, animals. They also reportedly kill almost every cat they collect from trusting members of the public who are under the mistaken notion that they will find loving homes for them. For this reason, I will never support this group.

Actively advocating against neuter/return and keeping cats outdoors, which PETA has always done, is not actively advocating against cats, and was in fact the position of every major national humane organization in the U.S. as recently as 20 years ago. According to a recent PETA policy statement, “TNR programs are doomed to failure because of basic population dynamics: Even if all of the cats in a “colony” are eventually spayed and neutered (which is nearly impossible), the food set out for them will always attract “new” cats. And feeding cats also promotes abandonment, since people are more inclined to abandon their cats if they believe that someone else will “take care of” them.” ANIMALS 24-7 partially disagrees with that statement, because we have in truth “zeroed out” feral cat populations in many test locations over the years, but accomplishing this requires working within a set of boundaries that cats themselves observe, to prevent immigration of “new” cats; sterilizing all of the cats within those boundaries within a single breeding season; not leaving cats at large who depend on feeding by humans; and not feeding truly feral cats, who are self-sufficient rodent hunters and neither want nor need human intervention in their lives. Unfortunately, few neuter/return practitioners work within those rules, and therefore the PETA view of neuter/return is too often accurate.
The PETA euthanasia policies and statistics, meanwhile, are nuanced by two realities. First, PETA is located and operates from Norfolk, Virginia. While PETA is often criticized for erring on the side of extreme caution in deciding which animals should be considered “adoptable,” other humane organizations in the Norfolk region have erred in the opposite direction, with at times catastrophic consequences for both animals (in several bad rescue hoarding situations) and humans (including in at least one recent fatality involving a newly rehomed pit bull.) Second, PETA appears to be the only major nonprofit organization in the region that accepts cats and dogs specifically for owner-requested euthanasia.

It is heartening to read that more and more people are expressing concern and empathy for fish. Back in the start-up days of the animal rights movement in the early 1980s, farm animals started receiving attention, thanks to Henry Spira and others who read Ruth Harrison’s eye-opening book Animal Machines (1964) exposing the horror of industrialized animal farming, followed by Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation in 1975. In the late 1980s I was cautioned by some animal rights activists that an organization focusing on chickens and turkeys (as your note in your article) would never fly. That was more than 27 years ago, and United Poultry Concerns rises up, every day, like the Phoenix from the ashes of death and despair, to renew our obligation to the birds – and to all animals suffering at the hands of humans. My longtime friend and colleague, Mary Finelli, has now advanced our animal rights movement to include the inhabitants of the water through Fish Feel. The birds and the fish need our relentless advocacy on their behalf. There’s no turning back. Thank you for your very valuable article emphasizing and bolstering this commitment.

Thank you very much for your kind words and this wonderful, much appreciated article. If the public doesn’t take concern for some sentient species seriously it is in part due to our failure as animal advocates to effectively advocate for them.

Fishing and fish farming harm so many species and in so many ways. Fishing is also a gateway to disregard for animal concerns in general, with this torture and killing of animals being held up as a wholesome, admirable activity, and with children being encouraged to engage in such animal abuse for ‘fun,’ teaching them to disrespect animals and desensitizing them to their suffering.

It’s been a long time coming but the animal rights community is at long last beginning to show significant concern for fishes. In addition to the ways you’ve mentioned, the book “What a Fish Knows” was published this year with much media attention and rave reviews. Jonathan Balcombe, the author of this invaluable work, is currently on a world tour for it, and the book is to be translated into Asian languages. http://us.macmillan.com/whatafishknows/jonathanbalcombe/9780374714338

Just this past week, some 50 organizations on 4 continents very creatively participated in the first World Day for the End of Fishing (which the Toronto action mentioned in the article was part of): https://www.end-of-fishing.org/en/

People have really rallied for the cownose rays, with the petition against the killing contests garnering over 230,000 signatures, and a coalition of animal protection and environmental organizations forming to advocate for the rays: http://savetheraysmd.org/ The amended bill just needs to clear the Maryland senate yet before heading to the governor’s desk.

Thanks to Karen Davis for being such a stellar mentor, and to Animals 24/7 (and, prior to it, Merritt Clifton while editor of Animal People) for giving fishes such desperately needed attention and meaningful consideration. Fishes are indeed at long last getting attention but their plight has been neglected for so long and their situation is more dire than ever. They are wondrous, admirable animals as deserving of our respect and compassion as are any other sentient beings, and advocacy for them is key to addressing many animal issues.

Hoo-RAY! Governor Hogan signed the cownose ray bills into law yesterday (May 5, 2017)! Thanks VERY much to all of you who helped accomplish this.
The law puts a moratorium on fishing contests for the rays in Maryland waters until July 2019, and calls on the Department of Natural Resources to develop a management plan for rays by the end of 2018. We need for it to put a permanent ban on these cruel and reckless contests!